Great Northern railway

DCC problems.

Just before the ops session, I connected a volt/amp meter to get data on how much current was being drawn. The old saying of don't change things just before you're going to use them holds true, again! Not sure why but the meter, that was put in line with the two power wires, hosed Digitrax. Engines were sounding unusual, some wouldn't run smoothly, etc. Previously, I had set the CB's to 2.5 amps to prevent the CB's and Digitrax from 'fighting each other' when a short occurred. The meter said I was exceeding 2.5 amps but, after testing the next day, I found Digitrax worked fine when the meter was removed from the system. The CB's have been changed to 3.8 amps (default is 5 amps) to offer more 'cushion' when several trains are running at once.

I had 8 engines powered up on the mainline and all works well at 3.8 amps and no meter.

Before removing the meter, I took some readings of different equipemnt:

amps.

.38-.44 :With no engine or lighted cars on the layout. Seems strange that this is not zero or close to it.

D&RGW 2-8-8-2 with wow sound and KA:

.13 engine at idle

.26 engine pulling zephyr cars on level ground

.70 engine on grade

.99 with finger in front of engine for max amps

Zephyr passenger cars by bli. (just the cars)

.27 initial start

.23 after a few seconds (probably capacitors charging, initially)

PRR passenger cars with 7 cars incandescent and 2 LED's

.89 at rest

Other observations:

N&W J with smoke (MTH) and 6 LED lighted passenger cars.

.45 at rest

1.52 running no grade

1.73 on 0.5 grade.

Bachmann: GG1 with their decoder

.02 at rest

.08 running engine only

.40 finger in front

The CV settings for the CB's: CV49 was set to 03 to give me 3.8 amps.

Besides the meter problems, I had a some cars shorting at one turnout. Turned out the solder joint for the points weakened and allowed part of the point rail to get too close to the stock rail and the inside of wheels were touching it.